LOD-ish ground textures

Ethoir · March 2017

Does anyone know if this has come up before? I tried searches for it but nothing came up that was quite the same as this.

Since the Jester's Festival started, high traffic areas started causing the ground textures to become mostly blurry. Patches would look like LOD-style blobs of color and others would look fine. It doesn't affect structures or decorative scenery (plants and trees) and for the most part it doesn't affect characters either. It only affects the ground textures.

This is a problem I've seen (and tolerated) most often in Cyrodiil in the last couple of years, but for it to happen in PvE zones is where I have to draw the line. Especially since it happens in both the 32 and 64 bit clients.

@ZOS_GinaBruno or @ZOS_JessicaFolsom Any ideas what's going on? I know its related at least partially to how populated an area is, but who would be able to explain the more technical reason for it? Are there plans to address this?

This is what I'm running into:

lonewolf26 · March 2017

Noticed this as well.

MajesticHaruki · March 2017

Happened to me today aswell.

NewBlacksmurf · March 2017

Same for Xbox one
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Catnight · March 2017

This happend for me from time to time, even before the event. Most of the time goind in to an instanced area (house, dungeons etc) or traveling to another place and coming back will likely fix it.

Ethoir · March 2017

What makes this "officially" a pain in the neck for me is that while this existed before the event, it had been a problem exclusive to Cyrodiil PvP. I tolerated it, though I was hoping the devs would've taken notice of it at some point. Since they haven't, I am blowing a whistle on this as it has now started impacting my enjoyment of the regular (and low-salt

) content.

I can think of several reasons this happens, the most obvious being the population of the zone in question. Other factors can include how much the player is traveling in the zone, how fast the player is traveling through the zone, and how active the zone is (hand-in-hand with population).

I wish sa community manager or a dev could comment on this and give insight on how to mitigate this or if a fix is planned. It's unavoidable in PvP for me, but I can't tolerate this while I'm running around farming crafting mats or doing pledges.

FuriousStar · March 2017

Yep, saw this in Auridon yesterday. Place was crowded with "shadow warriors" too.

NewBlacksmurf · March 2017

Catnight wrote: »

This happend for me from time to time, even before the event. Most of the time goind in to an instanced area (house, dungeons etc) or traveling to another place and coming back will likely fix it.

No it doesn't fix it. It occurs when the server phase is overloaded...it's not our machines

Mystrius_Archaion · March 2017

It's not high traffic. It's a problem with memory refresh in RAM.

This happens every time you take the wayshrines from vulkhel guard to skywatch then to the college of aldmeri propriety and back again. The same happens for the wayshrines nearest the dolmens.

The game is no longer refreshing the world geometry and texture data without actually going through a loading screen. I can't help but think this may be related to them trying to fix that AMD flickering grass glitch on ESO end because AMD is slow or incompetent.

I'm using a Nvidia card, how about everyone else? Is it just tied to our graphics cards and not AMD?

Mystrius_Archaion · March 2017

FuriousStar wrote: »

Yep, saw this in Auridon yesterday. Place was crowded with "shadow warriors" too.

That is a problem with loading data. I haven't seen that. You may have your graphics settings, specifically character detail, set too low. Could be your pc isn't powerful enough like a friend of mine who recently upgraded and went from "shadow warriors online" to the full game. lol

DoctorAlcatraz · March 2017

Strange, this happened to me yesterday in the exact same area on the Xbox One.

JasonSilverSpring · March 2017

Mystrius_Archaion wrote: »

It's not high traffic. It's a problem with memory refresh in RAM.

This happens every time you take the wayshrines from vulkhel guard to skywatch then to the college of aldmeri propriety and back again. The same happens for the wayshrines nearest the dolmens.

The game is no longer refreshing the world geometry and texture data without actually going through a loading screen. I can't help but think this may be related to them trying to fix that AMD flickering grass glitch on ESO end because AMD is slow or incompetent.

I'm using a Nvidia card, how about everyone else? Is it just tied to our graphics cards and not AMD?

I can concur that this exact series of travels in Auridon are guaranteed to cause the issue. It is just easy to notice now because of the festival going on that calls for these travels. I have not tested using other wayshrines in Auridon or even doing similar in zone jumps in other zones to see if the same thing occurs.

I also have an Nvidia card. I kind of doubt it is related to them trying to fix the AMD flickering grass though as I do not believe they have posted any fix for that yet.

I don't remember encountering this during the New Life Festival though, but I cannot remember how many in zone jumps we needed to do for that one. I know we had to go to Vulkhel Guard and Skywatch, but I don't remember going anywhere else in Auridon for that festival.

I am glad to know it is not just me with this issue.

Turelus · March 2017

I've had it in Cyrodiil countless times, however the event and Auridon was the first time I've encountered it in PvE areas.

Stopnaggin · March 2017

Happens everytime in Auridon at the ws, only noticed it when the festidal started.

VoodooPlatypus · March 2017

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Happens everytime in Auridon at the ws, only noticed it when the festidal started.

I've seen it on PS4 in numerous areas for a long time now. I've always just chalked it up to high network traffic and textures taking their time to make their way "through the wires" so to speak. Similar things have happened in other MMOs I've played in the past.

However, the issue has been VERY persistent (it's almost like clockwork) in some areas ever since the Jester event began - namely the Vulkhel Guard area as referenced in the previous posts.

SantieClaws · March 2017

Khajiit has this happen many times - but only ever around the wayshrine in Auridon and only since the last patch yes.

This is different from something being just slow to load. It is possible to stand there for a good while yes and it does not resolve itself.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Ethoir · April 2017

I just timed it. The loading screen I see immediately before the issue pops up lasts only six seconds instead of the usual fifteen to thirty seconds (for my hardware config and HDD). So yes, the game isn't properly refreshing/loading the terrain texture data in memory after certain sequences of teleports.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I can concur that this exact series of travels in Auridon are guaranteed to cause the issue. It is just easy to notice now because of the festival going on that calls for these travels. I have not tested using other wayshrines in Auridon or even doing similar in zone jumps in other zones to see if the same thing occurs.

I can verify other wayshrines do this as well, so long as they are a sequence of 3 across the zone. No issues with other zones though I haven't tried such a thing anywhere else with the zie and distance traveled comparable to Auridon. It also happens when traveling the reverse way heading north at which point the north wayshrine area has the low res ground.

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I also have an Nvidia card. I kind of doubt it is related to them trying to fix the AMD flickering grass though as I do not believe they have posted any fix for that yet.

It could be that a combination of a patch tot he game and the update to the AMD drivers caused them to have the flickering grass but Nvidia to have this texture issue because the game may be coded to incorrectly use/refresh memory in the graphics card, but I'm unsure about this.

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I don't remember encountering this during the New Life Festival though, but I cannot remember how many in zone jumps we needed to do for that one. I know we had to go to Vulkhel Guard and Skywatch, but I don't remember going anywhere else in Auridon for that festival.

Correct. It was just those 2 points. That was not enough to show any issues, and skywatch is large so we traveled far enough to refresh the memory likely when heading across the zone. There was also the manor door we entered to mudball the ambassador that would cause a graphical refresh, if coded as I think it is.
And actually, you didn't need to go to vulkhel guard at all. It was just back and forth from eastmarch.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

Turelus wrote: »

I've had it in Cyrodiil countless times, however the event and Auridon was the first time I've encountered it in PvE areas.

I wondered about that. It definitely seems to be a large zone issue with fast-traveling far and back.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Happens everytime in Auridon at the ws, only noticed it when the festidal started.

It's not the festival itself but player behavior showing a flaw in the system.
It only happens when you use wayshrines all the way up auridon and back again and only at the end where you started the loop, either north end or south end.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

VoodooPlatypus wrote: »

Stopnaggin wrote: »

Happens everytime in Auridon at the ws, only noticed it when the festidal started.

I've seen it on PS4 in numerous areas for a long time now. I've always just chalked it up to high network traffic and textures taking their time to make their way "through the wires" so to speak. Similar things have happened in other MMOs I've played in the past.

However, the issue has been VERY persistent (it's almost like clockwork) in some areas ever since the Jester event began - namely the Vulkhel Guard area as referenced in the previous posts.

It's not load related, number of people or high traffic time.

The issue is that the textures are the low-resolution "looking from a distance" textures that are rendered to save processing power in a computer generated space without reloading every time you hit a certain distance.
Ever play Morrowind? That game had a loading screen every time you moved a certain distance because the world was broken up into "cells" to keep it from killing your pc or xbox. The technology has moved on to on-the-fly texture and model refresh to compensate for getting rid of loading screens and allow long draw distances.

The problem is you start close to the texture then you wayshrine go far away, but the game still loads the first area in low-res, and then you quickly fast-travel back to the area with low-res textures now and they do not refresh like they should.
We never noticed this before in most situations because we weren't trying to go as fast as we could back and forth as far as is possible in one zone. We were usually either traveling slowly because we didn't know the wayshrine locations(have to visit first to be able to fast travel) or traveling from another zone specifically to the one location we needed and then to another zone. Rarely does the game ever ask you to go from one point in a zone to another far away, and definitely not skip along the entire zone to 3 points.
That is why it was never noticed before and why it happens.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

SantieClaws wrote: »

Khajiit has this happen many times - but only ever around the wayshrine in Auridon and only since the last patch yes.

This is different from something being just slow to load. It is possible to stand there for a good while yes and it does not resolve itself.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

That's because it doesn't refresh textures as you stand there. They're loaded once in VRAM and then only refreshed when you leave the area. It's not refreshing them though if you leave the area but don't leave the zone.

The game is coded to do 2 things.
1) When you move away from an area it changes the texture load of those areas you were at to lower resolution to still allow you to look back and see the general color of the landscape(like seeing farms from an airplane) without having to render all the detail that would be too much data.
2) When you move closer to an area it changes the textures to higher resolution versions because you are close enough to actually see detail and thus need the detail for the believable world.

Technically, all of Auridon is loaded when you enter the zone. The game is currently not doing number 2 very well when you move away quickly and then come back quickly, causing the issue.

WillhelmBlack · April 2017

I've had this bug for 3 years, happens in Cyrodiil.

Mystrius_Archaion · April 2017

WillhelmBlack wrote: »

I've had this bug for 3 years, happens in Cyrodiil.

Yep, likely a bug with the game engine coded in since the very beginning to not update textures properly when varying distance to and from the textures.